Asked why Superman isn’t performing as well in international markets as it is in the States, James Gunn wondered whether a hero so linked to “truth, justice and the American way” would always suffer in the current political climate. Whether you buy that as an explanation in this particular case […]
Graham Williamson
Senior Contributor
The Box Man (2024): Far from Boxed-in Cinema from sporadically productive genius
Gakuryu Ishii is one of those artists like Terrence Malick, Thomas Pynchon and Daniel Day-Lewis, whose legend rests in part on their long absences. He spent a decade in the wilderness after directing his extraordinary black comedy The Crazy Family before returning with 1994’s Angel Dust, and he currently averages […]
Divine Love (2019): An All-Too-Conceivable Dystopia
Satirists these days are given to complaining that their job is impossible, that the slate of clownish authoritarian world leaders cannot be made more preposterous than they already are. Spare a thought, though, for writers of dystopian fiction. For decades, these stories enjoyed an exalted status. They were the fictions […]
The Wind Will Carry Us (1999): Kiarostami in the country
The theme of the stressed-out, materialistic big city professional finding renewal and redemption in a small town is one mainstream cinema goes back to time and time again, and it usually makes my teeth itch. If big-name American directors really found Midwestern small towns as life-affirming as they claim to, […]
Ishanou (1990) Indian regional cinema probes the mystery of faith
Standard screenwriting advice has it that nothing confuses an audience faster than unclear character motivations, but some of the most powerful stories succeed by refusing to do exactly that. We never learn what made Daniel Plainview so embittered, or why Iago hates Othello, and nobody worth listening to would say […]
Noise (2017): getting to the truth of true crime
Sakka is a streaming service whose mission is to provide a global platform for independent Japanese films. This would have been laudable enough back in the DVD era, when a small handful of labels decided which non-Anglophone films would be distributed in the UK. It’s even more vital these days, […]
Outside the Blue Box: The Importance of Being Earnest (2025)
Welcome to a new feature in which a rotating cast of Geek Show writers look at what the stars, writers and directors of Doctor Who get up to outside the show. We gave you a little taster of this last Christmas, but for the full experience we recommend signing up […]
Doctor Who A-Z #69: The Green Death (1973)
Classic seasons of Doctor Who aren’t designed as a holistic experience like the new seasons are, but as far back as the Troughton era there’s been a sense that a season finale should offer something big. Quite what that bigness involves changes over time. The Troughton finales still mostly register […]
Doctor Who A-Z #68: Planet of the Daleks (1973)
Planet of the Daleks is the penultimate story – Invasion of the Dinosaurs is the last – to have material missing from the archives, specifically the colour negative of episode three. A colourised version has been made, but I watched a version where this one episode was in black and […]
Doctor Who A-Z #67: Frontier in Space (1973)
I think I love the flour the most. The apparent hijacking of a human ship by alien mercenaries, the one that kick-starts this story and nearly causes a war between solar systems, isn’t a raid on a ship carrying space marines or photon torpedoes or anything like that. It’s an […]